Oct. 2010, Leipzig Charles P. Slichter: January 21, 1924 – February 19, 2018 Charlie Slichter was a pioneer of magnetic resonance as well as condensed matter physics. He was highly respected by both communities as he shaped magnetic resonance by using it in the most fundamental way to prove or disprove new condensed matter theory. He originated from the Harvard strand (Purcell) of magnetic resonance, and accomplished most of his discoveries and inventions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which he joined already in 1949 the year he received his PhD. Today, perhaps more than ever before, a large magnetic resonance community knows about his proof of Overhauser’s theory of DNP with the first electron-nucleus double resonance experiments, with his student Carver in 1953. Another early, fundamental contribution concerned the determination of the absolute value of the spin susceptibility of metallic electrons which Pauli had calculated. By using a sequential version of the DNP double- resonance experiment, together with his student Schumacher they measured the electronic spin contribution in 1954. When Bardeen was thinking that a gap in the electronic density of states must be behind superconductivity (that had evaded explanation since 1911), Slichter concluded that this must show up in nuclear relaxation. But that superconductivity was known to break down in even small magnetic fields, so how to do NMR? I must admit that I studied his 1957 paper only in 1997, after I had spent more than a year in Slichter’s lab trying to prove or disprove the so-called stripe-model (spatial modulations of spin and charge) in high-temperature superconductors. I emerged totally discouraged from reading, and I told him. It was about field cycling, spin-temperature, and relaxation by superconducting electrons when they break up, all accomplished in 1957 the year Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer formulated their famous BCS theory of superconductivity. This brings up the other side of Charlie Slichter. He was able to make you feel important within a minute, up and fit for the finest experiment that could change the world. Of course, the discovery of the indirect spin-spin coupling with Gutowsky, surface studies of platinum, the invention of the coherent NMR spectrometer, we all use today, McMillan’s charge-density waves, the Kondo-effect, ultraslow motion, relaxation in the rotating frame, color centers, and many more discov- eries or inventions in physics and chemistry carry his mark. With the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity by Bednorz and M¨ uller in 1986, NMR spectrometers all over the world were searching for the Hebel-Slichter peak - to no avail. Slichter started a few years late, but with the most careful experi- ments in the field he contributed fundamental evidence, in lack of theory. These were the gold rush years, but he stayed close to the experiments and away from 1